Book 1 in the Cat’s Eye Chronicles
Reviewed by CJ | Rating: 4/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥 | 📖
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Hopeless Necromantic yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
Opening Hook
I picked this one up expecting a fun, silly fantasy romp with a skeleton and a demon and maybe some light necromancy chaos. What I got was all of that — genuinely, laugh-out-loud funny — and then a grief narrative that quietly crept up and made me feel things. Hopeless Necromantic is a debut novel but reads like Shiloh Briar has been doing this for years.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
We open on Sikras, an incredibly powerful necromancer known as Cat’s Eye (after accidentally absorbing an ancient death magic that was never meant for him), holed up in his mansion, barely functioning, reviving corpses for locals for what amounts to pocket change. Beside him, is Benjamin. His late brother-in-law, now a walking, talking skeleton, kept on this side of the living plane entirely by Sikras’s power and grief. It’s not exactly thriving for either of them. But it is, in its own deeply unhinged way, kind of sweet.
Then the pink-haired demon Helspira shows up at the door with a royal summons from Queen Saelihn of Nyllmas. Sikras is desperately needed in war (still) and if they have to drag him in for his tax evasion to get him to participate then that’s how low the queen is perpared to stoop.
Sikras says no, obviously, because all of his power is being funneled into keeping Benjamin conscious and walking around. There’s some back and forth and a bit of convincing, but eventually the three of them (Sikras, Benjamin, and Helspira) are off to meet the queen and figure out what the hell is going on with Vessik, also known as the evil necromancer, adversary in this war, and puppeteerer of the corpse of Sikras’s deceased wife Imra. As far as they can tell, Vessik doing things that according to Sikras, Vessik simply should not be capable of doing. They went to wizardry school together giving Sikras an intimate knowledge of what his once dear friend Vessik can and can’t do. Something is very wrong. What follows is a found family forming, complete with inappropriate jokes, scheming, some light theft, a wizard they definitely upset in the process of stealing a very important teleportation scroll, and Helspira getting pulled between her loyalty to Banneret Rowan and her growing attachment to the two disasters she’s inexplicably fond of.
The Banneret’s completely reasonable (according to him) plan, is to get Benjamin killed (ideally in a way that looks accidental) so that Sikras’s power snaps back to full strength and they can actually win this war. The queen would never sanction it because they Ben and Sikras are both like family to her. Sikras obviously would never agree to it. But if nobody knows it was on purpose… The scroll they retrieved was meant to be Benjamin’s escape route when he went in to face Vessik directly, but Helspira uses it saving Sikras’s life in the field, and with that, the Banneret has had enough. He fires her and sends her home to (and I’m paraphrasing here): pack up your demon parents and get out before I make your family’s freedom everyone’s problem.
Sikras and Benjamin, to absolutely no one’s surprise, cannot stand the thought of losing her. They go after her. And once they’re all reuinited, that’s when Vessik unexpectedly shows up, having left the safe confines of the small village they were squatting in. It only takes a few moments for Sikras to realize that Vessik is not okay and hasn’t been in control of any of this. Turns out Vessik signed his soul over to a Diavolos named Ithusa — an immortal, soul-eating spawn of a god with spiral horns, claws, wings, the whole terrifying package — and once that deal was made, Ithusa owned him completely. The evil wasn’t Vessik. It was never really Vessik. And Sikras, who has spoken about this man with nothing but love and grief the whole book, now has to come to terms with what it will take to stop him.
The final battle is massive, and Sikras gives everything he has to save his late wife Imra’s soul from Ithusa’s collection, the absence around which this entire story has been orbiting. In doing so finally faces the thing he has been running from for four years. The truth he’s been actively not thinking about since rejoining the world of the living on this quest. He is not keeping Benjamin alive for Benjamin; he is keeping Ben alive for himself. And Benjamin, patient and warm and generous to the last, has been humoring him this whole time, waiting for him to heal.
Letting Benjamin go is the emotional climax of this entire book, and I felt all the big feelings along with it. The book closes with Ben moving on to his afterlife, Sikras regaining his full Cat’s Eye powers, and Sikras having opened his home to Helspira and her parents as the two of them quietly beginning to plan what comes next. Ithusa is out there, having escaped to the demon realm of Chthonia while holding the jar of souls with Vessik’s among them, so we know things are far from over.
Best Part of This Book
The friendship between Helspira and Benjamin. These are two characters that every human around them is deeply unsettled by — a walking talking skeleton and a pink-haired demon with a mismatched eyeball — and they find each other and just immediately get it. The Abomination Alliance is unofficial but very real. It’s adorable, and it gives the book so much of its warmth. Their friendships with Sikras rounds out the found family dynamic beautifully, each of their relationships with Benjamin are at the heart of this thing.
Also, the humor. It’s not trying too hard be funny, it just is and that was a pleasant surprise in a debut.
Worst Part of This Book
There’s not much I can point to. The pacing held, the world could have been fleshed out a bit more, but I didn’t feel like it was lacking because I was thoroughly entertained and followed along without confusion. My only minor complaint would be that the relationship between Sikras and Helspira felt more like friendship to me than romantic for most of the book and the transition surprised me, but that could have easily been me missing the more subtle signs.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥🔥 — Closed Door
There is a romance developing between Sikras and Helspira, and it is slow-building and by the end there are some intimate scenes (kissing, a little making out) but nothing beyond that. It’s closed door, it fits the tone of the book perfectly, and the relationship grows naturally out of genuine friendship and mutual respect. This is not a spicy read.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Satisfied, with the very clear understanding that this is a midpoint stop rather than a full resolution. The emotional arc — Sikras letting Benjamin go — lands completely. The war situation is temporarily stabilized. The found family is intact, although changed and everything is set up for what comes next. Ithusa is still out there with Vessik’s soul in her jar, giving us the direction for book two, but it doesn’t feel like a cliffhanger so much as a breath before the next phase.
Would We Reread It?
Someday, maybe. No immediate plans, but this is one of those feel-good books with real emotional weight under the humor. It would hold up on a reread. The kind of book you’d come back to when you need something that’s going to make you laugh and feel big things.
The Twist We Didn’t See Coming
Vessik was never the villain. He sold his soul to Ithusa — a Diavolos, an immortal soul-eating creature — and once that deal was made, she owned him completely. Every terrible thing done in his name was her doing through him. The fact that Sikras talks about Vessik with such consistent warmth and grief throughout the book makes this land harder than it would have otherwise. You can feel what this costs Sikras to learn. He didn’t lose his friend to evil. He lost him to something far worse.
The Found Family We Didn’t Know We Needed
This book is built on the idea that connection can be chosen, and that sometimes the people willing to die for you are a grief-wrecked necromancer, a skeleton who’s technically already dead, and a demon who was supposed to be your enemy. The found family in Hopeless Necromantic is like a warm hug from a friend. It starts funny and it ends with people throwing themselves in front of each other without hesitation, and by the time it gets there you believe every single bit of it.
Who Is This For?
This is for readers who want emotional depth alongside their entertainment. If grief, trauma, and learning to let go wrapped in dark humor and genuine warmth sounds like your kind of thing, this book is for you. If you want to avoid heavy themes or dark humour isn’t your style, this probably isn’t your read. But if you want to laugh out loud, feel things you weren’t prepared for, and finish a book genuinely rooting for a skeleton and his grieving necromancer best friend? Absolutely pick this up.
Where to Get This Book
📖 Physical Book
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🎧 Audiobook
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📱 Ebook / Kindle Unlimited
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📚 More from the Cat’s Eye Chronicles
- Book 1 — Hopeless Necromantic | Reviewed by CJ | ⭐ 4/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥 — you’re here
- Book 2 — Necromantic Getaway | Coming March 2027
Ready for more reviews from CJ? Find More Here
Plot Twisted. 🔥
📖 | Series: Cat’s Eye Chronicles Book 1 | Genre: Fantasy | Steam: 🔥🔥